Richard Hamilton

Dirk Nowitzki earned his second double-double of the season. So that’s nice. It was his first game back in more than a week. So that’s nice, too. What’s a little less nice is was how belabored the victory was in just about every way for both Dallas and Dirk.

It’s a veritable Ron-a-thon in the FA pool. Derrick Rose returned after a couple games off and tagged out Deng for what looks to be at least a week. The first thing you need to know is Luol Deng came into Monday night leading the league in minutes played through the first quarter of the season.

This year’s fourth overall pick, Tristan Thompson, has some growin’ to do. He’s going to need to learn to distribute the ball at least a little better. In five games, he’s amassed two dimes. Two dimes in 10 days. That’s less than my great grandfather made selling a day’s worth of newspapers.

(Today’s post title is for all you connoisseurs of niche comedians from the ’80s.) Stephen Jackson is hobbled, but played anyway. If you have another option, go with it, because Jackson ran up and down the court last night like Pacino at the end of ‘Dick Tracy.’ (Deep cut!) The word out of Northc’alina is that if the Bobcats lost to the Pacers (effectively wiping away their playoff hopes), Stack Jacks would be shut down for the season.

Every time I type C.J. Miles’ name, I want to type Watson. I almost type it. I get to the “t” and have to delete. This tells me that Miles just hasn’t made a name for himself yet. Hasn’t carved out his place.

Troy Murphy signed with the Celtics, who seem to be gunning for the all-time record of broke-down NBA big men. Erick Dampier feels like he should be on this team. You get the feeling Rajon Rondo spends most of his free time Skyping kids his own age during road trips while the rest of the Celtics roster goes out to see “The King’s Speech” for the third time?

Between trades and buyouts, more than 50 players will be wearing jerseys they weren’t wearing a week ago. Fifty. Five-oh, my! We’ve had three of the league’s top 20 players switch conferences (Aw, shucks. You still consider me top 20? Easy, Gerald Wallace.

Stephen Curry ended his season averaging 26.4/6.4/8.1 in April and he catapulted to many pre-season top 10 lists (not this one). Halfway through this season – and coming off two lackluster, foul-plagued games – Curry is averaging 18.2/3.4/5.9, has missed eight games due to foot injuries, and it feels like Curry’s a … not a bust, exactly, but a bit of a disappointment.

When Chicago’s Carlos Boozer left Saturday’s game with a rolled ankle, two things popped into my mind: 1) His blocking numbers suggest he’s been playing with rolled ankles most of his career, why the dramatics all of a sudden? 2) if he’s being taken to the player parking garage in a golf cart, perhaps he shouldn’t be driving home, 3) did I say two things or three things popped into my mind?

The Pistons said they benched former star(ter) Richard Hamilton on Wednesday so as not to risk injuring him before they ship him off to a farm upstate. They didn’t tell Rip that’s why he wasn’t going to play. They just told him they wanted to save his energy for the really important games.